Awkward First Date? There’s An App For That.

By Rega Jha

In 21st century America, there are certain situations that are and always will be 100% inescapable. Your laptop’s battery will always die just as soon as you get comfortable in bed, and the charger will always be just out of reach. Your WiFi will always give up on you for precisely the last five minutes of your Girls-marathon. You will never go five minutes without hearing Carly Rae Jepsen asking you, quite politely, to call her. Maybe. These are situations we’ve reconciled ourselves to and more often than not, we survive.

But believe it or not, there is one situation more perilous, more inevitable, and more inescapable than even those. What I’m speaking of is, of course, the infamous Awkward First Date. The restaurant faux-pas, the unannounced sweat-stains, the hug vs. kiss vs. hand-shake dilemma, the moment of undiluted blind-date horror when you realize that his Facebook profile picture was most definitely taken no later than 1995.

Well, thanks to the good people over at e-Harmony, we can take that last terror off our list of inescapable situations. This is 21st century America after all, and that means that where there’s a problem to solve, there’s an iPhone app to solve it. Enter the Bad Date Rescue app, which will not only call you whenever you want it to (in three seconds, one minute, or five minutes), it will even come up with an elaborate and pre-scripted excuse for you to leave. All you have to do is answer the phone, and then enjoy your freedom.

So sleep easy, folks. You may not be able to escape unreliable WiFi or Carly Rae Jepsen, but at least you know that whenever things turn south over dinner-and-drinks, all it takes is one click of a button for your “mom” to call you frantically, shouting for you to please leave your awful date and get over there immediately. After all, “Your sister is having a baby!”